Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to cellular communications.
Description of the Related Art
This section introduces aspects that may help facilitate a better understanding of the invention. Accordingly, the statements of this section are to be read in this light and are not to be understood as admissions about what is prior art or what is not prior art.
The following background information may present examples of specific aspects of the prior art (e.g., without limitation, approaches, facts, or common wisdom) that, while expected to be helpful to further educate the reader as to additional aspects of the prior art, is not be construed as limiting the present invention, or any embodiments thereof, to anything stated or implied therein or inferred thereupon.
Modern mass two-way communication systems are designed to support either a limited user base with maximum reliability (e.g., military and government users under any circumstances) or a broad user base with significant bandwidth under most (but not all) circumstances (e.g., “99.9% uptime” for telecom companies). In the event of an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) disrupting the power to the telecom networks, two-way communications would be inoperable since the telecom networks are not hardened to withstand EMPs as a whole. Portions of the networks may be hardened, but the system as a whole can be assumed not to function. Even if these systems survive an EMP, they cannot operate indefinitely without power since limited or no on-site power generation capacity exists, and the power grid cannot survive an EMP. On the other hand, government communications systems are reliable, but would not be able to handle sudden large influxes of communications traffic including civilian data.